As expected, Lucent and Juniper last week announced a joint marketing and product development partnership whereby Lucent will sell, service and support Juniper routers for wireline applications.

Lucent announced a similar arrangement with Cisco a few months ago for the mobile wireless market. Lucent disclosed previously that it would line up partnerships to fill the IP/MPLS gap in its product portfolio following the cancellation of two key products obtained via acquisition.

Lucent and Juniper said they will deliver "unified solutions" designed to migrate service provider networks to IP infrastructures. These offerings will address core, data, broadband and metro optical wireline requirements, the companies said.

The combined products will target a market that will grow from $8.5 billion in 2003 to $12.2 billion in 2005, according to Lucent and Juniper.

The joint offerings include:

*IP VPN (available now) - based on existing products that support VPN services over an IP/MPLS core network.
*Multiservice Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Core (available in the first quarter of 2004) - designed to support ATM/frame relay services while adding IP services onto a converged IP/MPLS core.
*IP Centrex (available now) - enables service providers to deliver IP Centrex services to enterprises over a packet-based network.
*Enhanced DSL (available now) - designed to enable service providers to address mass-market xDSL service rollout.
*Optical Edge (under joint development) - an offering designed to expand the enterprise market for Ethernet services over existing service provider networks.

Lucent's Worldwide Services unit will provide network design, integration, deployment and maintenance services, the companies said.

Lucent is offering two sources for IP/MPLS - Cisco and Juniper - because Cisco competes directly with Lucent in wireline networks, specifically in ATM switching and metro/long-haul optical, according to Nikos Theodosopoulos, telecommunications equipment analyst at UBS Warburg in New York. Nonetheless, as recently as five days ago, top executives at Cisco were pressing Lucent to scotch the deal with Juniper and partner with Cisco for the wireline opportunity as well.

"We continue to believe Juniper is [a] likely partner although we cannot rule Cisco out completely," Theodosopoulos stated in an April 30 bulletin. An April 4 UBS Warburg bulletin stated that "Cisco is making a big executive push to turn this decision around in favor of Cisco."